Intervention: Listening Practice for Inclusive Pedagogies
This intervention offers a recurring drop-in listening workshop for students and staff, inspired by composer and feminist thinker Pauline Oliveros’ proposal to ‘listen to our listening’. Each session provides a space for participants to trial a listening score. Structured reflections follow, where participants discuss not only what they listened to but also how they listened, surfacing dynamics of privilege, voice, and presence.
Diversity considerations:
The intervention foregrounds neurodiversity, linguistic diversity, and cultural difference—dimensions that often shape who is ‘heard’ in the classroom. By focusing on listening over speaking, the practice supports participation from students who may be less comfortable with dominant discussion formats, including those for whom English is an additional language or who experience anxiety or sensory sensitivities. Listening is reframed as a productive contribution, rather than a passive state.
Link to practice:
As a community artist, my work has long been concerned with group dynamics. My doctoral research explores listening within community-based art making, and I now wish to transpose this learning into a pedagogic setting—asking how listening can reveal hidden structures, whether relational or political. By centering listening as method, this intervention directly challenges hierarchies of voice in the classroom.
Feasibility:
The intervention is feasible as it requires minimal resources (a space, simple stationary) and can be offered as an extracurricular resource. One challenge lies in shifting pedagogical norms—valuing silence, slowness, and deep attention. However, this approach aligns with wider shifts in higher education towards inclusive practice and active learning. Recruitment of participants may also be a challenge; I plan to begin by offering the workshops to students in sound and music departments, where listening is already a topic of concern, with the hope that students will value the sessions and invite others to join.
Peers’ feedback:
I have not yet had the opportunity to propose this to the course team.
Hannah, I appreciate how this intervention challenges dominant norms around participation, often centred on verbal expression, by validating quieter, more reflective modes of engagement. Your focus on neurodiversity, linguistic difference and cultural variation is crucial in classrooms where traditional formats can exclude. Reframing listening as active contribution invites a richer understanding of presence and power.
The plan to begin with sound and music students is a good idea, grounding the work in relevant contexts and supporting organic growth. One suggestion is to consider how listening scores and reflections might be adapted for diverse sensory and cognitive needs, through visual prompts or translated materials, to increase accessibility and confidence for all participants.
This has real potential to shift how we understand voice, participation, and learning, it’s well-considered and a feasible intervention that aligns with inclusive pedagogies.
This sounds like a really interesting and exciting intervention. I really like how you are taking the form of listening and making it not only a valid form of contribution but a active need in these sessions. There is also scope for this to become a student lead practice where you could also train students to become facilitators of sessions which could help promote peer to peer learning. Looking forward to seeing how this develops
This was such an interesting proposal that made me think about the hierarchy of senses, amongst other things. I appreciated your phrase ‘English as an additional language’, I have never heard that term, but it certainly places less emphasis the non-dominance, or a hierarchy of linguistic knowing, so thanks for sharing that. Secondly, what an illuminating provocation to think about how we actively receive as learners rather than how we express ourselves. It certainly seems like our educational systems gear us up to be great orators or also to perhaps privilege those who are. Is listening strictly auditory in this case? What would be the ‘listening score’?
Hannah, this sounds like a fascinating proposal. I have lots of questions, which we can open in the group presentations. One for now, is the listening activity going to be based on listening to conversations/speech, or is the ‘score’ a form of music/sound? If the latter, it will be interesting to think about the canons that exist within music, and how one could challenge these. For example, it may be that students could be invited to bring something that reflects their own taste in sound, as a form of inclusive practice?
Hi Hannah
Lovely to have a chat the other day. Thank you for sharing your intervention design ideas and sorry for the late post; I thought this had been done already.
As discussed, I think this is a thoughtful and well-grounded intervention that repositions listening not as a passive activity but as an active, embodied and inclusive pedagogical strategy. The structured reflections that follow each session create a space to surface ‘dynamics of privilege, voice, and presence’ as well as the assumptions embedded in the social and cultural frameworks that shape our worldviews and practices. As you point out, by focusing on listening over speaking, the practice supports participation from students with diverse needs and by also asking who is heard and how, the sessions offer a model rooted in attentiveness, care, equity and diversity, which maps well to LO4. You address aspects of feasibility in terms of resources and how it can complement existing curriculum in line with other extracurricular activities, which makes it more sustainable. You may also want to consider creating a parallel space (e.g. online board) for people to share their reflections/recommendations/continue the discussion outside the session.
You also touch on aspects of your practice and positionality (LO3) but it’d be good to expand on this, considering your perspectives as a tutor, facilitator, practitioner, researcher, and co-learner during the sessions. You can also consider things you’ve observed, experiences, discussions, insights gained over the course or through engagement with colleagues that have influenced your motivation and your approach to this intervention.
The intervention also demonstrates engagement with LO1, as it critiques dominant pedagogical modes that often favour extroversion, fluency in English, or assertive verbal expression. You may find Sara Ahmed’s (2012) On Being Included… possibly useful when considering how institutions ‘do’ diversity and how inclusion can become performative if not meaningfully embedded into relational and institutional practice. In terms of LO2, your intervention also sheds light on the ways in which inequity manifests through ‘classroom’ norms that privilege speaking as the main mode of engagement. It’d be good to include some of the relevant literature here, for example, Davies (2022) may be helpful in articulating how new understandings of how we learn can disrupt normative assumptions around learning (e.g. the primacy of writing)
I hope you find this useful, I’m including some resources that you may find useful.
Regards, Victor
Potentially useful :
Davies (2022) The White Spaces of Dyslexic Difference: An Intersectional Analysis
Shen & Sanders (2023) Small Interventions, Big Shifts:
Ahmed, S. (2019): What’s the Use? – Reflects on how institutional spaces can be inclusive/exclusive.
Ahmed (2012) On Being Included…
Bayeck (2022), Positionality in research
Below, just a reminder of the learning outcomes.
LO1: Critically evaluate institutional, national and global perspectives of equality and diversity in relation to your academic practice context. [Enquiry]
LO2: Manifest your understanding of practices of inequity, their impact, and the implications for your professional context. [Knowledge]
LO3: Articulate the development of your positionality and identity through the lens of inclusive practices. [Communication]
LO4: Enact a sustainable transformation that applies intersectional social justice within your practice. [Realisation]